Full Tilt Poker Announces Onyx Cup

Full Tilt Poker has just announced the introduction of the Onyx Cup tournament to its live tournament roster. The No Limit Hold’em events will be a series of six high-stakes tournaments and will feature buy-ins between $100,000 and $300,000, taking place in North America, Europe, and Asia, with the first stop in Las Vegas stop in May.

The concept of this series is very simple. Feature the largest live tournament buy-ins comprising of the toughest fields to determine who really is the champion. Quite often, the top poker pros don’t have the opportunity to compete against each other due to huge fields in the major live tournaments. Well that is about to change, and the average joes will also have the opportunity to qualify on Full Tilt to play alongside elite players in the tournament.

There will be points on offer in each tournament for the Onyx Cup Leaderboard. When the high stakes tournament series draws to a conclusion, the player who sits at the top of the leaderboard will collect the Onyx Cup and a luxury sports car.

When asked about the Onyx Cup, Phil Ivey said, “I think it’s not just about the money in this event. It’s more about playing with the caliber of players that we’re going to be up against. A lot of these guys here at the table are my friends. We’re friendly, but we’re also super competitive against each other, so there’s going to be a lot of pride that comes with winning this type of event.”

Seidel had this to say regarding the creation of a high-stakes live tournament series: “I think it’s a natural progression because there’s so much money around and people are playing for such high stakes. It was inevitable. I think Full Tilt was really the only online organization that could pull this off because they have all the best players in the world.”

Tom “durrrr” Dwan, who is currently in the middle of completing two Durrrr Million Dollar Challenges matches, had this to say: “I think there will definitely be fewer amateurs who want to play for $100,000 when they hear that right away, but as the events start happening and people start seeing the fields and seeing people they want to play with, it could easily grow in a way like the World Series did. Maybe in 2013 there will be 12 events. Who knows?”

The Grand Finale tournament will feature a $250,000 buy-in and will have $1 million added to the prize pool.